


it reaches out

by Isis



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Minor Jim Holden/Naomi Nagata, Nightmares, Post-Eros Incident (The Expanse), Protomolecule
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: The nightmares begin after the gates open.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	it reaches out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tangentti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangentti/gifts).



The nightmares begin after the gates open.

It’s not as though Holden’s ever slept well or peacefully, especially now that all of humanity’s looking in his direction, but that first night he wakes with a start, his mouth shaped to form a scream that’s still trapped in his throat, to find Naomi gently rubbing his shoulder and murmuring his name.

“Bad dream,” he gasps, and she nods, waiting for him to gather his thoughts, for his ragged breathing to calm to something approaching normal. After a few moments, he relaxes, a little, in her arms. “There was a woman, a Belter. Not you – not anyone I’d ever seen before – but she was tall, crammed in behind some equipment she was working on, and she was muttering in the Belter language, something like _nacorcho, nacorcho_ , over and over.”

“ _Na khorocho_ ,” Naomi says. “It means, _not good_.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t. When I got close, she got up and looked at me. Said, ‘My name is Lisa Woo,’ and then...” He shakes his head. He doesn’t really want to remember, but he can’t forget. “Exploded into blue light.”

“Blue light? Like the protomolecule?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

He sleeps a little, and then it happens again: it’s another Belter woman in his dream, a blonde this time, and instead of tools in her hand she’s shuffling a deck of cards in her long fingers with the easy, casual movements of someone who’s done it so many times that her hands do it on their own, without conscious thought. Abruptly she looks up at him. “My name is Magdalen Przeworski,” she says, and then she is nothing but the blue light of the protomolecule.

This time, the scream rips itself out of his mouth, and when he wakes he apologizes to Naomi, over and over.

“I’m fine,” she says. “But I don’t like seeing you like this.”

“Yeah, me neither. Look, I don’t want to kick you out, but you should get some sleep without me waking you every five minutes.”

Her mouth twists into the half-smile he loves so much. “Not quite that often. And you need sleep, too.”

“I’ve got a feeling that’s not going to happen.”

When she’s kissed him and left the small cabin, he looks across the room at nothing. “Miller? You there?”

No reply.

“What’s going on?”

No reply to that either, so he sighs and scrunches down under the blanket again. He thinks he’s never going to fall asleep again, but he does, into another nightmare, and another. When he finally makes his way to the galley, bleary-eyed and haggard, he has seen eleven deaths; eleven Belters who’ve looked at him, given their names, and then disintegrated into glowing blue protomolecular strands.

Amos looks up from his coffee. “You look like shit.”

“Thank you.”

That’s the good thing about Amos. He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t put on a sympathetic face, just snorts a little and goes back to his coffee. But when Holden heads out to the _Roci’s_ bridge he runs straight into Naomi, and she’s not going to let him off lightly, and of course, he doesn’t want her to. “Eleven,” he tells her. His voice is hoarse; his throat is sore. “Belters, all of them. I think they might have been on Eros.”

She gives him a quick hug and then a thoughtful look. “They all give you their names?”

He pulls out his hand terminal and turns it so she can see the list.

“Send that to me. I’ll do some digging.”

It’s not long before she drops down into the seat next to him, nodding. “All on Eros, yeah. Lisa Woo was a smelter tech. Jerry Bosch was a welder.”

Smelter techs, welders, casino dealers, security guards. All had died on Eros. The raw material of their bodies and the wreckage of the station had been crafted by the protomolecule into the Sol Ring. 

“They’re in the ring now,” he says. “All of them.”

“And they’re talking to you?”

He shrugs. “Miller talks to me, or he did. I think – I think they want me to bear witness. To know that they’re still here, each one of them, even though they’re...” He jerks his head toward the skin of the _Roci_ , toward the Ring space. “They’re still here.”

“One and a half million people died on Eros! You can’t witness them all!”

Holden looks up, meets her eyes. The concern in them warms him; she’s worried for him, he can see that, her protective mama bear instincts coming out at the perceived threat to someone she cares for. And she’s right to be worried, he supposes. One and a half million souls, all coming to him to be seen and acknowleged. It’s a huge responsibility.

But Holden has become accustomed to having responsibility thrust upon him. He does the best he can – he always does. He ought to be able to train himself not to scream, not to wake. He will look each of these ghosts in the eye, and nod, and repeat their names. He will tell them that they are not forgotten.

“Maybe not,” he finally says. “But I have to try.”


End file.
